Embracing Technology (and People)

A Riff on the Disruption of Technology

What happens when you put the pioneer of incorporating modern tech into chiropractic together with the current one? A clear understanding that it’s all about the technology ONLY if you understand its true purpose and power to connect you with the people who are ready to be part of your tribe.

Take about 30 minutes and listen to Drs. Guy Riekeman, Life U Chancellor, and Jason Deitch, social media mastermind, as they discuss the disruptive technologies merging to change the way we shop and access products and services – and be part of exploring how chiropractic can become part of the disruption.

OR, read through the transcript below the video – and be generous with your comments, likes and shares.

Jason: Looks like we are going live. Welcome to another episode of disruptive refs. It’s that time again; live at 5:00 on the East Coast. I don’t know what rhymes with “two” here on the Pacific Coast. But I want to welcome you. I’m Dr. Jason Deitch here for another episode of Disruptive Riffs and, of course, we are here with the Chancellor of Life University, Dr. Guy Riekeman. Guy, good to see you today.Guy: Beard’s looking good there, Jason.

Guy: I’d come up with a great idea, you know, about selling a man bun that you could just put on the evening when you’re going out on Saturday night. Found out they already had them. So anyway…

Jason: I’m not sure that’s happening out here on the left coast…

Guy: Don’t throw the big beard. I’ve seen the left coast likes the big beard and I think that’s got to go.

Jason: So I’m not doing that one either. That’s not me. Not now. But anyway, we’re getting there. Let’s get on to more important topics. This is Disruptive Riffs. We talk about disruptive ideas and how they are going to impact our profession. And if you’ve been watching anywhere on the news these days, I think one of the largest disruptive business stories going on right now is Amazon buying Whole Foods?

Guy: Yes.

Jason: Consummated yesterday. Besides lower cost avocados, what are you noticing? You’ve been at Whole Foods recently; have you seen any changes?

Guy: You know, actually, just down the street from me where I live here in Atlanta, they’re building a three-story Whole Foods. So, yeah, I drop in frequently to Whole Foods – make sure I take plenty of money with me.

Jason: That’s exactly right. Well, rumor has it, all of that’s going to change and I think I’d like to think this is one of our better Disruptive Riff episodes because what’s going on with Amazon and Whole Foods I think is an extremely – it’s a great example – of how these disruptions are affecting traditional businesses and digital businesses and how they’re coming together to change the way business is done. So, they’re actually saying that Amazon does not plan on making much profit by selling food at Whole Foods anymore, which, of course, changes the game for all the other supermarkets. And there’s an amazing…intersection of how you’ll soon be able to pick up your Amazon packages. You’ll soon be testing different types of Amazon eco-products while you’re physically in the store but, digitally, you’re also going to be able to stay up to date with what you used to physically buy and have it delivered to your home. I think we’re at the dawn of a whole new way in which business is to be done. I think it’s really…going to disrupt and set the stage for a whole new future and how businesses is happening. You’ve mentioned…your experience before with Tesla – buying a Tesla and so on – what are your thoughts on that?

Guy: You know, the other thing that I’ve been reading, too, is that Wal-Mart is just ready to become now the largest food store in the world. Right? So while we’re sort of ooh-ing and aah-ing over Amazon and Whole Foods, all of a sudden, sort of quietly in the background, Wal-Mart – and of course they’ll do this in an interesting way also – so I saw, when I was laying around in Rome, over there doing some work recently, getting the new campus up and running, busy during the day but at night not much to watch on television or to do when you’re sitting there by yourself. Of course in Italy, only a few English-speaking channels; one of them was CNBC and they have a show…called The Edge. You can actually go online and see some of the pieces of the episodes.
Fascinating, talking about the changes in technology that are coming. For example, a lot of the big retailers, high end, avant-garde retailers – Hermes, Valentino, et cetera – have created now an online shopping experience but completely different. It’s a virtual shopping reality where you [seem to] literally walk into a store online and, in this store you can go into departments, you can go into an area that the clothing displayed there with prices just like you would see on racks, on models, et cetera. Well, what’s really interesting, for example, let’s say you’re in the business wear section, then you can actually pick out a dress, right, that you would like to see and there’s a model, working in an office. She’s sitting behind, in this case, sitting behind the desk. There’s file cabinets, there’s a conference table, there’s things that she has to get up and do.

And you push the button and the dress that you’ve selected goes on her immediately. And so you can see what it’s like actually in the workplace as she moves around the office. And if you if you want to see what it looks like in a different color you hit a button and it goes from black and white to red and white or whatever the case may be. So you can see what it looks like and then you order it. So they have all these people in different situations that you can put the clothing that you’re looking down on before you purchase the clothing. Phenomenal. And it’s all online; it’s all virtual. I’ll come back to that later.

We actually did something like that in Renaissance. Joe Flesia, a chiropractor in Alabama – you remember this – way before the technology was able to support a virtual chiropractic office. But they’re doing this from a shopping standpoint right now. On this show [The Edge], for example, just to give you an idea where they’re going with this, U.P.S. is already experimenting with delivering packages with drones especially in rural areas where they have a lot of traveling to do the drop off a single package. So on the show they showed U.P.S. truck. Right? The brown truck driving up out in the country; it stopped in the middle of the road. And then there’s a drone in the roof of the truck and they load the package into the drone and the drone actually flies across the fields and sets it on the steps of the home and then it flies back to the location, picks up another package flies to the location. And this is already going on.

This is something they’re fantasizing about; this is already occurring and they’re in the test stages. One of the other things is, I’m sure Whole Foods and Amazon are getting into… They already have a home delivery and it’s driverless home delivery. So, on this show, they for your groceries, wherever you want. Right? And they put it in the truck, and the truck drive to your house. But there’s no driver in it and downloads the groceries and then drives on to the next location. One of the things that was really amazing – and this is where Amazon and Whole Foods I’m sure are going to come together. There’s another company and I apologize, I don’t really know the name, but it’s the largest home food delivery company in the world right now and what it was, was a huge auditorium – maybe the size of two basketball gymnasiums and all you saw were the bottom half of the gym was where just these square bins about, maybe eight feet by eight feet, and on top – and they were all lined up in perfect order – and on top were these drones, robots that moved like on a chessboard.

Right? They moved up and down. So they moved to a place, they’d extract milk. They’d move to another place extract lettuce. Move to another place. And then of course when the drone got the order filled, it took it over and deposited it into the driverless truck and they took it off. Not a human being in sight, right? Just a drone. A number of drones working really quickly on these grids, picking up that you know your order for groceries. So the change is coming. It’s already happening. There are two things, you know we talked about Tesla, about being able to go online – and this should be fun – any doctor can do this just to see what we’re talking about. You can buy a $130,000, a $170,000 Tesla X online. You go to Tesla Design Studio and across the top, it’s ask you if you want in an S, an X, something else. I would suggest just for fun, click on the X, which is the… ’cause it’s so cool, right? It’s what they call the falcon wings. They come up; there aren’t doors that open up normally. It’s their version of a crossover SUV and you go there and it literally takes less than five minutes to order a hundred thirty thousand dollar car with your credit card. So across the top it’ll ask you which model you want. There’s three models; there’s a one that goes from 0 to 60 and I think five seconds. There’s the one that goes from zero to 60 in 4.9 seconds; and then the $170,000 model goes from zero to 60 in 2.9 seconds.

You click on it, then you click on what color you want for the car, exterior; you click on what color you want for the interior. And you click on which wheels you want and on the side, you’ll see a panel on the side. You can click when you start with, you want to buy, refinance or lease. Just click; click lease for giggles and grins. Shows you each time you click on one of these things what your monthly lease payment is going to be. There’s no negotiating,, there’s no figuring it out there’s no businessperson that goes in the back to talk to the boss…and then you come down the front page and there’s a couple of options, maybe four decisions you have to make, literally four decisions.
You want the system with all the cameras so that eventually it drive itself, without you having to drive it? Do you want the system that has the…seating configuration that has six or seven different passengers in the car? But literally, as you click on them, it shows you how much your monthly lease is going to increase, based on that particular option, and that’s it. That’s your car. You go to the second page – and by the way, don’t get afraid you’re not hooked yet; you just do this for fun. You go to the second page and it ask you to put in your credit card information, it asks you when you want the car delivered – which one, where you want it delivered to, because there aren’t dealerships where you go by this thing.

So you can pick out, “I want the third week in October of 2019,” if you want to; pick the date when you want it delivered. You put your credit card information, you put a $2500 deposit down, your car is in process. I look at the college and you know I’ve been on the Enrollment Department, I mentioned this I think, in one of our other episodes. Right? The Enrollment department at Life…you know, a Life [DC] education is $110,the000 and it takes us forever to get a student enrolled in a school. All the hoops they have to jump through and you know here I’m buying a $130,000 car with a credit card in five to 10 minutes. The world’s changing.

Jason: The world is changing. Exactly. It is a whole new way in which people are thinking about business. Their expectations from businesses and it’s a whole new way of doing business. And you know you mentioned Wal-Mart, for example; in spite of all Wal-Mart’s superpowers, they are also now connecting with Google to basically, you know, I don’t know if you say team up on, or stay relevant with them and Walmart. So the world is changing. We see it every single day. I think the question is going to be, “Guy what does that have to do with chiropracTORs, chiropracTIC? We’re not going to ever, that I know of, going to be able to deliver an adjustment over the Internet. But as it relates to inspiring people, connecting with people, inviting people to learn more about us and so on, let’s speculate Let’s play, “What do you think is going to be possible in years to come?”

Guy: Well, you know we were laughing a bit because – I know you’ve seen this, this goes way back probably 20 years ago, before I went to Palmer actually, so at least 20 years ago. And…we created a virtual chiropractic office and it was literally an office, just like what we were talking about with the shopping. Back then, you had to put a special screen on your TV to make it touch screen. And we hired people from Nike to helped us design this. You literally walked up to the front of an office, you touched the screen, you know, as low tech and ineffective as it was, the doors of the clinic actually opened up, you walked into a virtual reception room. There was a receptionist there and now that I’ve looked at this, I’m going say we were way ahead of our time.

I hadn’t thought about this forever. There was a receptionist that asked you what you wanted, if you wanted…if you were there for patient education. You walked into an educational room. There was a theater set up with other people, you sat down in it, and Jack Perkins came out – was a big personality at the time who…had done the the centennial celebration video – and he came out and he went through the lecture and the questions would come up. You know, “What’s health?” and there’d be A, B, C, you pick one. And then it would say your answer is either right or wrong. Then, Jack Perkins would come on do, seven or eight minutes on what the correct answer was. So…a patient could do a whole healthcare class, you know, in the conference room and you could go into the library and there were research articles there on subluxation, different aspects of chiropractic.

So, we had this virtual office that someone could go into. I think it’s going to come to that. Again, they may have to come to the office they get they just to deliver. I’m not going to say that that may not even be impossible. Who knows what somebody may come up with? But at least, in the current consciousness that we live in. So how do I think it’s going to affect chiropractic? I think, one, it’s going to affect how we communicate with the community. I mean you know better than I…Facebook, maybe we could get to that…maybe some of the docs that are using that to actually grow their practices. They, you know, so instead of doing a screening you may be doing a virtual screening on Facebook and people are, in essence, kind of doing that already, to some degree.

So, there may be some things like that. I know in education we’re looking at it and it’s having a huge impact. We actually designed a curriculum with a group of people that the parameters were, how can we deliver in chiropractic, like education, for 70 percent of what we currently charge and have it be a more effective education? Along the way, while we’ve been working on this, the University of [Vermont] Medical School [as reported by West Virginia Public Radio] just announced that they have no more lectures in medical school; zero lectures.

It’s all done online. And then you come to school for the hands-on work, but the hands-on work is all experiential. It’s not sitting in a room with a lecture at the front of the room. If they can do it in medical school, we…ought to be able to do it in chiropractic school. Now, it’s hugely expensive to do it; it’s going to take some creativity…so we’re looking at that. For example, in Europe, in Rome…at the campus in Rome, we can’t obviously deliver, nor do we want to, the entire education online. And it’s not just the normal online. This is a different kind of education. It’s not just having some classes or some lectures that you look at online; it’s literally an interactive process that goes on.

But if you do that, you could deliver the education in any language you want. It doesn’t just have to be in English or Italian or Serbian or Russian; you could deliver it in any language you want. Imagine a person sitting in a hut in South Africa, you know, somewhere in a remote tribe, getting a chiropractic education, if you can learn how to deliver the experiential hands on part, which could be done. Sol you know, I don’t think our profession’s ready for that; and I think the state boards aren’t ready for it yet; I don’t think the CCE is ready for something like that, but I think we’re going to see it. We know – forget chiropractic for a moment – we know that everything in education is going to change. I believe it was Stanford that just announced they’re no longer building buildings for a library because libraries are now all virtual. So there’s no library on the campus, right, in the new campuses; there are no lectures in the new medical school curricula that are coming.

If you start thinking in those kinds of terms, imagine how that would impact, not only chiropractic education, but imagine how that would impact continuing education for a chiropractor; imagine how it might impact patient education for a chiropractor; imagine how it literally will affect how many people could get a chiropractic education, or how many patients could get introduced to chiropractic. If we do something like MOOCs…you know when MIT put out its first MOOC, which stands for Mass Online… Open Curriculum…they offered a course that wasn’t accredited but they offered a course in engineering. And over one billion people took the course.

So now there’s a whole, Coursera, which is a whole company that does nothing but MOOCs, right? Massive online open classes and they have 750,000 students taking courses through this of things that people want when they want to take it with the flexibility. And most people aren’t even concerned that with, in most cases, with getting…a degree they’re concerned with the information they need in order to be able to perform and do their task more effectively. And when you bring this up, I just realized, we just realized, this is that this year was the 10th anniversary of this [iPhone] – all of that’s happened in the last 10 years. We think it’s been around forever. The 10th anniversary of the iPhone. Imagine what the next ten years are going to be like.

Jason: I think going to be, well, I don’t mean to keep saying the word…it’s becoming a cliché and losing its value, but it’s disruptive, to say the least… And I think you know that’s my challenge to the profession. I think that’s why we’re here; we may not have all the answers – we don’t have all the answers – this episode, this second. But I will tell you that it does start with chiropractors being more open to innovative ideas, being more curious to see…what can we learn that’s going on in other industries. And, how do we…take the best practices in those industries and implement them within our profession. I would invite anybody, any chiropractors watching or any chiropractors you know, if you’re doing something innovative with technology – and I know a lot of them that are – to get everybody…included in the conversation, go ahead and leave a comment below or leave a link to somebody who’s doing something interesting related to how they are interfacing, integrating, what’s going on technologically especially in terms of education, inspiration, follow-up, and connecting with people, building relationships with people.

As you know you and I both know, our friend Seth Godin talked about building tribes. That happens. I’ve never met a Seth Godin; I don’t know if you’ve ever met him, but I get information from him every single day. I look forward to it. I learn from it. I grow from it. I appreciate it. And that’s exactly the same kind of thing we, I believe, should be doing locally with our communities each and every day. That’s the kind of relationship, leadership, and opportunity you – as a practicing chiropractor- have to build that type of authority.

And, I’m going to say, “Be a voice of reason in a community of some craziness and insanity.” That’s the beauty what the technology affords…our profession that has such a beautiful message and it has historically had so much prejudice and resistance to getting that message out. The only thing that stands in our way right now is ourselves.

Guy: So, given that lecture, which you and I admonish chiropractors all the time to be thinking in those terms… There are people that are doing stuff. Yes. You know if you take the most basic primal part of this, is Facebook ads, right? And I get that students sitting in chiropractic school today already know it and have them designed…but I know a lot of chiropractors sitting out there don’t have the foggiest idea what we talk about when we talk about Facebook ads. And yet I know that there are clinics, ours included here in Atlanta, they get scores of new patients every single month. We pick up the phone…and there’s a thing that says Windstar. And as soon as we hear that, we know that there’s someone that’s going to be connected on that line that’s made a call in to us, within a couple seconds, that’s going to be coming from a Facebook ad. We already know they’re a prospective person; they’ve seen something they’re calling up because they’ve seen something we put out on Facebook, and they want to make an appointment to get started.

We don’t even have to query them as to who’s calling us on the phone. And we do a lot of that through you, through AmpLIFEied and Josh, the guy that works for you… Talk about some of the people you know that are doing Facebook ads, what they look like. And, again, this is so revolutionary. But it’s certainly a different way of doing business. And you know, if you’re not doing this, you’re…not even in the game.

Jason: That’s exactly right. There…are still docs who are wondering if this Facebook thing is going to stick around for a little while…newsflash: it is. There are others of you that…allow your personal opinion and prejudice…you know, “I don’t like Facebook; I’m not into it; I don’t like spend my time on it.” That’s great. You should not waste your time on Facebook. I think we’re both here to tell you exactly that, except to say that there are actually, at this point, almost two billion people on Facebook. Many of them who really need your care. And so it’s an amazing way, through artificial intelligence data collection technology, all of the converging…advances coming together, to allow you to get your perfect message in front of the perfect audience at the perfect time, I’ll dare say, at the perfect price because you control that, too.

So, there’s just so much more! I was out over the weekend at an event and I was talking to a chiropractic assistant; I mentioned [that] you can do a Facebook live presentation, just like we’re doing right now, and the response was, “What’s that?” So there’s so much that you can be doing right now, like with Facebook, where you can choose the price you want to pay, choose the message you want to put out there, choose the audience. I want to focus on women; I want to focus on men between the ages… within a specific zip code, that have these particular interests, that may even be connected to a specific employer or a specific church or a specific group, or that buy other specific types of products. You can get that granular in getting your message in front of those people at exactly the right time. So, it just makes it much easier for them to find you and say yes to your care.

Guy: I’ll give you an example that actually came up in our staff meeting today. We have a family, I mean, we’re an urban clinic at the Vital LIFE Health Center and we’ve got an eight thousand square foot clinic hooked up to the Atlanta Birth Center and all that kind of stuff. And we’ve got, within a short radius around us about a million people in Atlanta. So, one, it’s how do you get…inside of that audience; it’s not like we’re out in a suburb and we go to the local high school football game and do a screening at the mall on the weekend and join the local church and now everybody knows we’re in town, right? That game plan just doesn’t work at all, right? Our version of a mall here are condos, you know? We have to figure out how to go to condos if we want to talk to people. There are no malls where I live, you know, where this clinic is.

But today, we were talking at our staff meeting about a family…I’ll give you an example: we have…a jazz festival at Piedmont Park and about 200,000 people come and we set up screenings there. And we found that most of the time, the people that we’ve screened have driven in; they’re not even from our area. We probably refer more people to chiropractors back in Alabama, in Tennessee, or Woodstock, Georgia than the people that happen to be in our location and come. Well, we have one person that we screened one time. We you know you always assume if they’re an hour and a half away, we should refer them. But this family came in; they drive an hour-and-a-half, three times a week for their chiropractic care and they’ve referred more people in to us than anybody else in our clinic at this particular point.

And they’re getting phenomenal results. They come in with their kids. And one of the staff members said, “Well…did you get them on video?” because we have a room set up that when we want a testimonial, we set up this educational center. We’ve got three cameras. Someone pushes a button. We get their testimonial right then; 15 minutes later, it’s labeled with our clinic, our music, our titles; it’s out the door, ready to go out on Facebook. So we have that set up. So, someone said, “Well, did you get them…on video?” and they said, “Well, we thought about not doing that because…they speak broken English, in Spanish, et cetera.” And one of our staff members says…you know, we have actually two staff members, they were both from Puerto Rico… “Well, I’ll go interview them in Spanish,” and they go, “Yeah, but then somebody will have to translate it.” This is the old thing right, translated into English. And we go, “No, no, no; we want it in Spanish… Do it in Spanish, don’t translate anything; then we’ll give it to Josh.” [Then,] you’ll make a Facebook ad out of it; as you said, you’ll find the Spanish speaking community in Georgia, which is huge; it’s the third largest fastest growing Spanish speaking community in the United States.
He’ll identify that on Facebook; it’ll go to those people specifically and we’ll hit a community that the average chiropractor doesn’t get because they’re trying to do this thing in English and send them off to a bunch of people…and, I don’t know. You follow me?

So, you know we need to talk more about how people are doing it and using it, like you said, to speak to certain groups. And then, of course, we can pay $50 or $100 and amps it up to other audiences if we want to do that. So, I think the real issue is…we need to be talking with chiropractors not just about that they should do it. You need to get a camera in your office; you need to, you know, have a format.
You need to be able to get these things out the door quickly. You need to have someone like Josh or yourself that identifies how to put them and how to identify which communities you want to go to and how to boost which ones, et cetera. There are things that can be done. Like I said, these Facebook ads are the easiest entry into that particular world and if any of that sounds foreign, we need to have a conversation about that piece.

Jason: That’s exactly right. Well, let me just…take a moment to…brag on you…because you know there’s a couple generations here that don’t know you, know your history and background; so, when you mention what you did Renaissance, I literally think it’s 30 plus years ago 25 or more. You know you did – and many people don’t know this – besides creating patient videos before people had a VCR.

Guy: [Laughing] Right. In 1977, only 10 percent of Americans had a VCR.

Jason: So, in fact, you bought the videos and you threw in the VCR at no extra charge, which was a thousand bucks, right? [Guy: Yeah.] That was revolutionary…in those days. Then, did follow it up with literally the virtual practice. I remember seeing it. I remember going through the tour. And it was like Star Trek. You just could not believe what you were looking at…. In today’s world, that would have been amazing and it was 30 years ago. So, for those that are maybe in school, they don’t know…Guy’s background, and history, and, I’ll say, contributions…they’ve been iconic over the decades. And it’s no different than right now…what is going on in present time is no different than it was. It’s about building connection and turning those connections into relationships.

Now…Guy…confirmed for me that the largest practices in history have always been the Reggie Gold practices and so on, yours and others, that were all about getting people to learn about what it is that you do; this is before they even get started, and then went and heard the story and…that makes a ton of sense. There was nothing to sell. They were just in and ready; they just needed to know how often do they come…? It is easier to build that kind of practice in today’s world than it’s ever been before because of how easy it is for you to get your story in front of thousands of people for free every single day of the week. So, I just hope that we can…instill in some of the older generation that’s still stuck on that, “I can I just put in a new Yellow Pages ad and have people” – and have it work today like it used to work.

So, some of us…in that generation might want to kind of start adopting some new ideas and new habits. In fact, one of the conversations that’s being had right now is what they call UBI, universal basic income, because they know how dramatic an impact robots are going to have in displacing jobs. And I just bring that up, and that the world is changing really quickly in front of our eyes. And, you know, I believe the disruptive technology for health care we, as practitioners, just need to get super excited about, is how we use technology to get our message to as many people as we can.

Guy: I agree. You know one other thing that we’re…actually getting, just to tell you how this is going and how quickly it’s coming… They selected three cities. Atlanta was one of them, Beijing is another, and I believe that Sao Paolo Brazil is the third one. You might get me on the last, but I’m pretty sure Sao Paulo. And, we’re shutting down in Atlanta, right? And I’m looking out the window here at midtown Atlanta. The road is called North Avenue. It runs from the freeway, from Georgia Tech and it’s a main thoroughfare up through city through to Ponce City Market, etc. I mean it is, literally, four or five lanes of busy traffic and they’re shutting it down for one year. And the only cars that are allowed to be on it are driverless cars. Because they’re doing an experiment in each of these three cities. Georgia Tech happens to be the reason behind why they chose this area.

But they’re doing three cities for one year to see: are there accidents, does it work, does it evolve? So, here in Atlanta, shutting down a major thoroughfare to explore the technology of people [riding] in cars where they don’t drive anymore. And they say, for example, that it’s going to cut the number of automobile accidents in the United States, or deaths, in the very first year that it’s introduced. So, they’re doing the beta test over the next year. So, expect in the next two to three years, driverless roads all over the United States – and cars that you don’t drive, the cars that you send to the airport to pick up people when they’re coming to town and you’re not even there. They have a code to get in the car, then it drives them back to your location.

I already saw my daughter’s Tesla, in the parking lot at a restaurant, we came out the first night and she took her iPhone out and the car backed itself out and drove over to where we were, opened up the doors, and we got in. It’s coming, right? And so, we’re playing all of that. It’s exciting and I’m challenging you and I, in the next couple of shows, that we actually bring to real life people that are out there doing this in chiropractic, and the responses that they’re having, [and] what they’re doing. Maybe we bring them on in interviews so that it’s not just talking about what they do. We can actually talk about how people are going about getting the school stuff going.

Jason: I love it. We’ll now wrap up today. Let me just leave you with some final comments and notes about this idea and what it means for you in your practice. How to even start thinking about it. And my closing suggestions are this…: Understand that…this is not just a simple [matter of] “hire somebody, pay somebody, it’s done.” It’s a mindset. And the first mindset I just want to introduce you to is that the Internet is designed to help you connect with people. But then, it’s also designed to allow you the opportunity to build a relationship with them over time, automatically and digitally. And the reason that’s so powerful is that, historically, the idea was you do a spinal screening, or some sort of event, or yellow pages ad – and it used to be that the idea was, “We’ll get them in for symptoms and then convert them into maintenance care, wellness care, whatever you want.

And the reason why that would work, at that point, was that for the most part people that were ready to come into your office today, tomorrow, the next day are people that usually have a problem that needs attention immediately. But what that does, is that it proliferates…the revolving door-type practice, that people come in with a symptom, feel better and leave – or don’t feel better and leave – unless they have extended financial aid, you have great charisma, or you’ve done a really good job with your education. That’s why I believe many practices continue to suffer with a new patient problem. Technology and your mindset can dramatically change all of that because if you use it to your advantage and understand that connection is the first step in then building a relationship digitally for people to learn more, actually get more connected with you, learn which of their friends are connected with you, and what they’re saying about their experience with you, then when they are ready – not when you’re ready, but when they are – they’ll be coming into your office and they won’t be shopping price and they’ll travel an hour-and-a-half or more in many cases because they have already built up a connection and a relationship with you. That is the power that you have to build a massive digital practice that feeds your physical practice and then you can, in your physical practice, feed your digital practice.

That, to me, is the power and the experience of what we’re learning with the connection on Amazon being a digital business, coming together with Whole Foods being a physical business, and the intersection of how they both can synergize and help each other grow exponentially.

That’s I think where the future of this is going. But that starts with us, as individuals, looking at it, seeing it, being willing to invest and adopt new ideas and new technologies in our practice. Yeah. We shall see.

Guy: Yeah. And you know, when I was up at my ranch in Colorado this weekend and no WiFi… no cellular connection, literally, I could not communicate with the outside world. And that was pretty good, too… It’s a getaway, but it doesn’t build the tribe, it doesn’t build your business. Although, I came up with a great new idea, probably just because the whole Amazon/Whole Foods thing was in the air, even though I did know it, being so disconnected, was a company – and I’m going to throw this out if someone decides to do it and I want a cut – but a company that literally creates and delivers your kids’ lunches every day before they go to school.

Right? It’s not a million-dollar idea; that’s a billion dollar idea, right? Anyway… Hey, one last thing when we’re going out because there’s always the part about, you know, is this going to feel inhuman? And it’s not, right? It’s going to allow us to be more human, not less human, because of the connection… I got this the other day and, by the way, Seth [Godin]’s quote today on responsibility was incredible. But anyway, those who say it can’t be done should stop interrupting those of us who are doing it. “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people never forget how you made them feel.” That’s Maya Angelou. “Life’s too short to wake up with regrets. Love the people that treat you right and forget the rest.”

In other words, we don’t have to go out and convince the medical community that they should like us. We just need to take the people that are ready to come on this journey and we can build that tribe on the Internet. [Continuing Maya Angelou’s quote:] “Two things you should not quit believing in: the goodness of people and true love. Without those two things, life would not be worth living.” So, we’ve just got to get back to serving with love, just love them up to death, and figure out how to communicate with them in the way they want to be communicated with – and today, they’re walking around with it in their hand; they’re just waiting for us to send the message to that little machine, that little computer, so they can participate.

Jason: Very simple. If you want to grow your practice, make sure your message is in their face. It’s really that simple. Anyway, on behalf of Dr. Guy Riekeman, Chancellor, Life University and myself, Dr. Jason Deitch, thanks for watching another edition of Disruptive Riffs.